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AIXpert Blog

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AIXpert Blog is about the AIX operating system from IBM running on POWER based machines called Power Systems and software related to it like PowerVM for virtualisation, PowerVC for Deploying VM's and PowerSC for security plus performance monitoring and nmon

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We all tend to concentrate on the CPU first and the memory second. CPUs, as the "brains" of the machine, does get a high focus and have a lot of extreme technology within it but the RAM is the "guts" of the machine to "feed" the CPU with nutrient data. OK, let us stop the analogy there :-) Along with reducing the number of CPUs via a lower virtual processor count, we also need to have the CPUs matching the memory - so AIX has a fighting change to localise a running process to its home SRAD and thus have it's data... [More]

I was told that Fedora's latest build for the Power ppc64 processor would support SMT=8 , if you "err ... um" have machine with a processor that support that SMT=8 !!! This is not an announcement. So I gave it ago - here is my report: Getting Ready And I can't help thinking PowerVC would remove all this work, once the new version arrives that support my ... umm err! new machine!! Update I can tell you know that this was a POWER8 S824 machine as it is now available. Also Fedora 20 does not... [More]

I get email a few times a week like "Nigel, what do you recommend for getting a good view of what the whole Power Server is doing, what resources are free for reuse for further Virtual Machines and which Virtual Machines are busy" My detailed thoughts are on the DeveloperWorks AIX wiki here: AIX Other Performance Tools but it appears no one reads websites any more, so I thought I would blog a few examples by screen capture to illuminate what is available. My first Whole Power Server and Virtual Server view recommendation is Systems... [More]

With AIX 7 and POWER7, you now have the option to run the old withdrawn AIX version 5.2 within a
WPAR with this new offering - AIX 5.3 Workload Partitions for AIX 7, version 1.1 This will run the same AIX 5.2 OS, same middle-ware and same application
but on right-up-to-date hardware and OS. Then you can remove the old
POWER4 (or older hardware) to: Reduce electricity & heat, Free up floor
or rack space, Reduce hardware maintenance or if you don't have it, reduce your risks, Plus either a
performance boost due to POWER7 or reduced... [More]

Our Advanced Technology Support, Europe team have had a few months secretly testing the Power 750/760 internally to IBM as part of the normal Early Ship Program which lets a few machine out of the development labs to be tested by others to gain feedback on the product, documentation, features and usability. I thought others would like to see a few pictures of the team and the equipment involved. Please note: This is an Early Ship Machine, so there are a few details like stickers and handle colours that may differ slightly from the final product... [More]

I regularly get asked a question like: I have 4 months of data from 25 machines and have to develop a Capacity Planning model to size these LPARs on to new machines but I am having problems with having so much data. What can you recommend? We need graphs of CPU compared to Entitlement CPU Physical CPU use Maximum real memory use Network MB/s Disk MB/s Disk IOPS Sometimes this data is needed as input in to the Workload Estimator tool or Server Consolidation tools. My standard response is: You now understand Performance Monitoring and... [More]

The below URL takes you to the top of the Systems Director 6.3 online documentation http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/director/pubs/topic/com.ibm.director.main.helps.doc/fqm0_main.html As a rule I use Firefox 3.6.24 all the time for my browsing as it works well for Systems Director and Hardware Management Console (HMC). Later Firefox versions have "variable" results which re frustrating and that just slow me down. The Firefox developer when mad and got to version 8 suddenly over what appeared to be a few weeks but have realised... [More]

I was just asked this question by customer and it got me thinking, Items I would include: WPAR takes seconds to create and LPARs minutes LPARs need setting VIOS LV or LUNs but WPARs add simpler NFS mount points, or can just use Global AIX diskspace options LPAR needs 512 to 1GB to boot AIX and a WPAR takes just ~60 MB (yes sixty megabytes) You can share application code say 1 GB in each and every LPAR (40 LPAR = 40 GB) or just one shared read-only copy for all WPARs 40 WPAR = 1 GB).This saves man-power in maintenance, disk space AND memory (if... [More]

Shared Storage Pools is the next big thing to owed systems admin time and boost flexibility for Power Systems, PowerVM and controlling SAN disks from the VIOS and HMC. I will not go on about SSP here but I particular like the fact Live Partition Mobility even with SAN disks is ready to go with SSP and there is no need to reZone the SAN disks. To start using the new and improved SSP, you need the latest Virtual I/O Server (VIOS) - the version name is a nightmare! Who ever thought VIOS 2.2.1.3 FP25 SP01 with iFix was a sensible name for a... [More]

So you have Discovered, given Access and run Inventory on your HMC and it is not finding the Servers and Virtual Servers that the HMC is connected too! What do you do next? Well here are a series of suggestions for you to try (this is not an official diagnostics path but might help you out): How much memory has your HMC got? I get people trying to use old HMCs and the original ones had just 1 GB of memory. This is basically not enough these days - in my humble opinion - unless you have just one machine! But how do you find out what you have?... [More]

I HAVE UPDATED THIS BLOG WITH BETTER, UP TO DATE AND CORRECTED INFORMATION FROM THE DEVELOPERS Read the comments for lots of useful information - Thanks Guys for the corrections WARNING: Advance Technology Support (ATS) Europe is getting reports today from users and IBMers that the POWER7 firmware 770 level as a pre-req check missing! could be much better . This results in the HMC agreeing to upgrade your POWER7 or POWER7+ machine to firmware level 770, when it is not supported and does not work. This causes very bad problems: On smaller... [More]

I am working with a larger Power 7 customer and learning lots about life in the large and professional computer room. Oh Gosh!!! My Power Virtual Machine (Logical Partition) is totally busy. Oh Heck!!! Look at all that System time, we have a serious problem!! Or do we? Take a look at the below nmon stats and make up your own mind before scrolling down. Actually, we are in offices many miles away from most of the Power 7 computers because the machines are
split across three sites. More than twenty Power 7 Model 795's is
enough to... [More]

The title should read "Local, Near & Far ..." - I will not correct it or links might fail. With a shared processor virtual machine (I am calling this "VM" but was called LPAR!) there are various suggestions of setting Entitlement ("Desired processing units" on the LPAR profile on the HMC, I am calling this "E") and Virtual Processor numbers (I am calling this "VP"). For Capped, the Entitlement is the maximum guaranteed CPU time that you can't go over and you round up the Entitlement to the... [More]

We have all probably seen or used the topas CEC on-screen view (topas -C command). This is started while logged into one AIX Virtual Server (LPAR) and shows all the other AIX or VIOS (as it is based on AIX) Virtual Servers of a single Power Server. Here is a reminder - this is on-line, on-screen and updated every 10 seconds or so: Here my Virtual Servers are called purple<something> and below the top machine summary we have a line for each Virtual Server and stats like AIX release, memory use, CPU stats (PhysB is the Physical CPU time... [More]

Here is another question from that larger Power 7 machine customer. They have large Virtual Machines (Logical Partitions) and can't see all the CPUs on the screen. This is made worst by Power 7 machines - not a problem with the processors or machines but there are: So many CPUs on larger machines like Power 770/780 and the mighty Power 795 Then the new Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT) now means four threads per physical CPU (core). This means lots of physical CPUs and each has four logical CPUs. So what happens on the screen - you see a... [More]